


the unlearning is taking so long

by nagia



Series: O Tower Not Ivory [6]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Decisions Have Consequences, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Ex-Farmboy Cullen, F/M, Mutual Pining, Rape Recovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-06 04:18:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5402732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more to getting better than just getting out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

His whole body throbs, as if sorely misused. The space behind his eyes twinges in time to his heart, and he can smell the thick salt of his own sweat. Cullen manages to crack his eyes open and look at the bundle of blankets and furs he's lying on, at the lump in the covers beneath his arm and the cracks in the boards that let the pre-dawn gray light in. It just makes the headache turn worse, into the sharp, driving pain that once made him immediately close his eyes again.

He's had too many mornings like this to think that closing his eyes, even hiding his head under a blanket, will win him a reprieve. This is just what waking up means, now that he's given up lyrium.

He does, at least, feel a little clearer, as if that damnable drug has mostly worked its way out of his system.

Cullen turns his head again, this time looking around for Inquisitor Trev—for Heloise. She's nowhere in the wagon to be seen, and the sudden anxiety — not panic, just healthy caution — speeds his heart and worsens his headache. Just as he's about to throw the blankets off and stagger toward the mouth of the wagon, demanding that she be released or returned, he realizes that the lump next to him is roughly Heloise-sized and warm.

He presses his hand to it and feels it rise and fall with slow, even breaths.

The last few days are hazy, dreamy, thanks to the Crows and their tincture, but he doesn't think he recalls waking up with her so close to him before. Not since the abandoned farmhouse.

For some reason, between the pounding in his skull and the ice in his veins, the fast beat of his heart, realizing that Heloise has once again spent the night in his arms fills him with a sense of disquiet. Perhaps it's just the lyrium cravings, convincing him now that he will learn something awful the way it sometimes convinces him that someone is standing just behind him with ill intent.

He doesn't peel back the blanket. Instead, he rests his hand on what he hopes is her shoulder and gives her a quick, firm squeeze. He says her name three times before shaking her.

She lets out a faint, creaking groan beneath the covers, and then shifts about, making the blanket jerk, until she's pulled it free of her face and can look over her shoulder at him. But for once Cullen is arrested not by the hauntingly familiar green eyes or the sensuous shape of her mouth, but by the fact that the blanket slips down to her shoulderblades.

Dark marks stain the paler column of her throat, and it's such an incongruous image that at first he thinks it must be mud or grease. But no, they bathed only yesterday, he remembers that much.

He's still tired enough, unthinking enough, that the first words out of his mouth are, "You look like you've been mauled by a bear."

She stares at him, before twisting to grab the covers and pull them back up over herself, hiding away the bruises that mar her. And yet she's no farther from him than she was earlier. He can feel heat radiating from her. She seems almost too warm, as if she might be feverish.

Cullen reaches out and presses the back of his hand to the back of her neck, feeling for fever. The skin is too dry, too hot, for this to be anything but.

Maker's breath.

"Heloise," he says, and he keeps his voice low. "You're ill, and from what I can tell, you've been injured." He draws in a breath to keep himself steady. He didn't see enough of those bruises, but their locations point to — he doesn't even want to think about it. Best just to focus on what needs be done now. "What happened last night?"

Her voice sounds dry and cracked, as if she must be half dying of thirst, when she asks, "You don't remember?"

No, he doesn't say. I remember nothing. The whole of the night before is a blank, save for the faint impression of a scent, lingering in his mouth and nose. Maker's breath, he remembers precious little about yesterday, after bathing. He has vague, dreamy memories of walking through the woods, wet and cold and — leaning into her? Making her laugh? But the rest is gone, scythed away by the smell of lavender.

Cullen lets his silence speak for him, and then says, as softly as he dares, "Heloise. I need to know how badly they hurt you."

For a moment, her only answer is a thin, soft groan. She shifts underneath the blankets they share, as if testing herself by testing how well she can move.

"Just bruises, mostly," she says, after an inventory. After another pause, she says, in a voice so small it almost startles him, "I can walk, still, but — not very far, I don't think. Not today."

He almost contradicts her, almost demands to know how 'just bruises' means she can't even walk. But he catches himself in time, and only asks, "Heloise?"

"I — there was — damage. Within." Her tone is more careful than gentle, and more wary than careful. She is, he realizes, afraid of how he's going to react to that news.

He knows he won't be steady on his feet, but the urge to rise, to storm out of the wagon and strangle the first of the Crows who gets in the way of his hands, is a burn in his gut. Like the kind of belly-ache that rises into the chest, leaving him half unable to breathe from the force of his own fury. He tightens his jaw against the flood of words that spring up, curses and questions and threats for the men who hurt her, words that all boil down to _how dare they_.

How dare they harm the Herald of Andraste? Worse yet, what sort of man looks at Heloise, with her warm green eyes and shy, crooked smile, and needs to force himself upon her?

* * *

Cullen does none of the things he longs to. He doesn't swear, or strike his fist against the wagon. He doesn't even let himself clench his hands tight.

It is one thing, to be angry on her behalf. It's understandable, acceptable. It is entirely another to tax her with his reactions. Her pain — physical and otherwise — is enough to contend with. It would be inexcusable to add more.

So he asks her, slow and quiet and serious as ever he's learned to be, as ever he's been accused of, "What can I do to help you now? If you need, I can insist that they permit you visit a chirurgeon." Or he can simply kill them. Each and every one of those blasphemous, disgusting creatures, not even worthy of being called men.

He understands, now, how so many of the mages who had suffered nothing themselves had still looked on templars as if they were mangy, slavering dogs.

Silence rules the pair of them for a little while, until Heloise's tired, lifeless voice says, simply, "I want to wash the blood off."

There's a fleeting moment where he almost pictures it. Where this blood might be, how much of it she must have lost, for her to sound and speak the way she does. But part of a templar's training is mental discipline, and he forces his mind toward careful stillness, deliberately silencing any such thoughts and blanking any images that spring to mind.

He makes his way to the wagon's opening. He checks the position of the sun in the sky and is surprised to find it still early morn, just an hour or so past dawn. Three of the Crows are arguing in Antivan, while their leader sits, bored and relaxed, upon a bedroll. As Cullen watches, he lifts his head and makes a comment in the same language.

One of the Crows stiffens. The other two shoot their leader a dark look, and then the leader is springing to his feet.

"Commander," he says to Cullen, and his eyes are bright and merry. He has the precise same bounce in his step as he did yesterday. No sign of languor, nor any sign of pain. That he was the mastermind behind whatever, precisely, came to pass last night, Cullen doesn't doubt, but he seems to have escaped any attempt the Inquisitor made to defend herself.

The thought sharpens his rage, and Cullen has to draw a breath in through his mouth and let it out, slow and controlled, through his nose.

"The Inquisitor is badly injured," Cullen says. He keeps his voice even, without inflection. If he permits himself so much as a quaver or any sign of emotion, there's no telling what he'll end up saying. "She's in need of medical attention and a bath."

"And how in all of Thedas did _this_ happen," the Crow leader says, in a tone that manages to be both smarmy and exaggeratedly surprised. He's as easy as if they are discussing something — anything — else when he asks, "Shall a bucket of stream water and a rag do? As for first aid — I fear we used the last of our elfroot during our first skirmish with you."

He has to close his mouth on two different replies. His anger returns, hot and fierce, roaring wild through his ears and making his hands shake.

"You could at least warm it over the coals of your fire, and send someone to find some elfroot. It only grows everywhere," Cullen says. The words come out sharp, forceful, not the request of a captive but an order. He has to take another breath, and he realizes that his pulse has begun to pound in his chest, quick throughout his veins.

"Federico," one of the other Crows says. His eyes don't leave Cullen, even as he slips back into Antivan. His voice is diffident, but Cullen has the impression that the man is siding with him.

The Crow leader, Federico, waves a hand in dismissal. "Very well. Water and rags for the Herald." To the Crow who'd sided with Cullen, he says, "See to it, will you? And Commander, I do not recommend leaving the wagon to help. Stay where we put you, no?"

Cullen makes no reply, but he does accept a bucket of warmed water and a bundle of washrags from one of the nameless assassins. He steps away from the opening, lets the cloth fall back to cover it. Sunlight begins to seep through the wagon covering, as gradual as the spread of blood in water.

He takes the bucket to Heloise's prone form, then sits beside her. He tries to pitch his voice soft, gentle, as he asks, "Shall I help you?"

She's silent for a long, long time. He almost repeats his question, but just as he's gathering up the words — perhaps if he says it differently? — she says, "I… yes, please. If you can bear to."

He eases the sheet back — and realizes that she has been concealing, for some hours by now, a knife and a vial of lyrium. The knife is long but slender, and almost entirely flat. It has no distinct hilt, only leather wound around one end. The leather has been wrapped so tight that there's little difference between the edged part of the blade and the intended grip. Perfect for concealment and opening letters, but anyone trying to use it without gauntlets on would likely cut their palms.

"Where did you…?"

"One of the Crows. He seemed… regretful." Heloise tilts her head, her mouth quirking into a bleak smile that seems to match the dark circles under her hollowed eyes. "Perhaps he had a religious experience."

Cullen stares. She cannot possibly mean what he thinks she does. She cannot possibly be making the jest he thinks she is making. And yet, if she chooses to turn the events of the previous night into a dark, bitter jape, he cannot deny her the right. Still, the remark does not sit well with him.

He swallows, and resolves to ignore it. Instead, he asks, "Do you intend to use it?" At her blank look, he nods toward the knife.

"No. It's for you. The lyrium is mine, of course." 

Of course. Though he notes, as he takes the knife from her and stashes it in his boot, that her grip on the vial of lyrium tightens at his approach. He ignores this, instead focusing on finding a way to rest a naked blade against his calf without cutting himself. It's a good thing the knife is flat, else he'd be in real danger of cutting the cord of his heel. As it is, there will be a stiffness in his step, and he'll have to move very carefully.

It's not until he's well and fully unwound her sheet cocoon and helped her to sit up that he sees the full extent of the injury and indignity dealt her.

It's a good thing he didn't let himself imagine the blood before. What he sees vastly outstrips anything he might have pictured. Her thighs are smeared with a tacky brown crust that looks shiny and almost black in some places, marbled through with a thin vein of white he forces himself not to think about. There's so much that he hears a faint crackling noise, as if scabs were tearing, when she forces her legs to part enough to admit a soaked rag.

He could not have imagined the handprints. They span her arms, her waist, her hips, so dark a purple that he winces in sympathy. There's even a dark, hand-shaped smear on one of her breasts. Whichever Crow left _that_ reminder on her skin must have been particularly sadistic; the mark is so clear it must have been deliberate.

Cullen wets one of the other rags. When she nods her approval, he gently presses it against her skin. He doesn't scrub, though Heloise does, scratching at her skin with the soaked cloth, her movements almost frantic. Instead, he first lets the water suffuse the blood. This done, he presses the rag in just a hair tighter, and then rubs at her skin through it. He keeps his motions small, light, not digging in with his fingertips the way she does.

When he takes a breath in through his nose, he smells lavender still. Her hair, he thinks, and then wonders why he assumes the scent is coming from her hair.

Still, whatever the source, it drifts through the wagon, light and unmistakable, unforgettable. Coupled with his complete lack of memory of the last day and a half and the way Heloise trembles as she laves at her skin, the odor makes him feel faintly queasy.

By the time they finish, the water in the bowl has gone from clear and clean to yellow and then finally an orangey pink. Heloise's body is shaking, from fine tremors in her hands to shudders that wrack her shoulders and torso.

"You've taken a chill?" He leaves the statement open-ended, more a question than he's used to using.

She looks at him, and for a moment, he's not sure what she's seeing. Her gaze is almost blank, expression colorless. She might well be looking through him, or simply letting her eyes rest in his direction while she thinks.

"Yes," she says. Then she furrows her brows and says, "No. I… I don't know. Perhaps I'm just shaking."

Still, fixing this is something to do. And he _needs_ to act. If he acts, at least he won't have to think.

Cullen tosses the blood-stained sheet away and digs around in the various fabrics the Crows have tossed into the wagon. He comes up with Heloise's shirt, first, and is glad to see that it's still essentially clean from having been worn the day before. It could be worse, at least. He hunts more until he finds another sheet, this one a slightly thicker weave. It's a soft wool, too, rather than the faintly scratchy linen they'd been using.

These he carries back to her. He drapes the shirt around her shoulders, not bothering to try to get her to uncross her arms. She does, though, after a moment, and even manages to button the shirtfront closed on her own. It's almost impressive, given the way her hands are going just now.

After that, he lays the sheet over her, gently tucking it so she can wind herself in it if she chooses.

* * *

The hours go by, and Cullen tries not to count them. The Crows don't seem much interested in letting him out of the wagon for any reason, and Heloise seems barely able to sit up, much less stand. She may have thought she could walk, but he sees no support for her claim. At least she seems a touch more like herself after Cullen manages to bully drinking water for them out of the more repentant Crows. Aware enough, at least, to see some mad need to push him away.

Her forehead, when she lets him press the back of his hand to it, is hot and dry. It's like touching his fingers to the winds that blow in the Western Approach. It worries him. Worse still, she drinks water and sleeps, unmoving, unstirring. She gives no sign of hunger, though the Crows pass up a simple meal of bread, cheese, and jerky. Not even the jerky tempts her, though he makes it a point to leave her half — a little more than half, actually — of everything, should the fever pass.

None of these are good signs, he knows. And yet there is nothing he can do. She does, at least, seem to improve after drinking the lyrium. But of course she does: a mage's body burns through its own mana the way a normal man's uses stamina. Restoring her mana pool will help her body heal itself at least as much as water and sleep.

Cullen can rationalize it all. Can understand what's happening and what it means, can see what needs to happen next. And yet the sight of her drinking a lyrium draught all in one go, tilting her head such that she leaves not even a drop, hits him low in the stomach where the hunger lives. He's struck with the sudden mad urge to lunge toward her, to press kisses against her mouth and draw away any drops left on her skin, to chase the taste past her lips. But he shakes his head and clears his mind of such unworthy thoughts.

He didn't break ten years ago. He won't now, and he certainly won't do so at the behest of lyrium.

It's not until just past sundown that Heloise finally stirs again. Cullen kneels beside her, gives her water, and then has to help her stand. Her legs shake, but then, he has to step close to help her, and her whole body quivers once again. He very nearly curses himself aloud; Maker save him, what a fool he is. Of course it's difficult for her to be near him just now.

Frankly, he'd be surprised if there was a man alive who wouldn't make her uncomfortable, today of all days.

"Do you need…?"

"I can kill him," she says, and her warm eyes narrow. Her expression is distant, cold, and if she ever showed half this calculation in their regular chess matches, she'd trounce him every time.

He's not sure if the sight of her like this is disquieting or reassuring. This is the second real sign of focused thought he's seen from her today, and that's good, isn't it? And yes, whichever of those vile, unworthy men she decides to kill deserve to die. They _all_ deserve their deaths.

The burn of anger that's been threatening to consume him all day — that he's forced down and stomped out until it winked, dim but still dangerous, like banked coals in his belly — catches up again. His whole body flushes with it, hot and cold at once, the fire in his blood like her fever.

"Shall I retrieve your staff?"

"No." She shakes her head, and her gaze is on the wagon mouth and the warm, red glow of the campfire the Crows have lit. "Just — don't let me fall over. I thought I could walk, but..."

Knowing it's useless, knowing that in her place, he would slap himself for saying this, he offers, "I can carry you."

To his amazement, Heloise actually considers the idea. But then she shakes her head again, and says, "I need to be standing. I am not the victim you think me."

He doesn't think her a victim. A survivor, perhaps. But a victim would have been destroyed by this, rather than be plotting the death of one of her tormentors.

That thought gives him pause. Only one?

"Distract the lot of them, and I can take out a few more. We can take the wagon, find the nearest town." Find themselves a chirurgeon. As he takes the brunt of her weight and works to keep her upright, Cullen notices a certain languor in his muscles, a looseness that borders on fatigue, that must surely come from the tincture.

"No," she says. "I only need to kill their leader."

He wants to snap that all of them deserve to die, every man who touched her and every man who stood aside and did nothing. But he doesn't say it. His anger is his own burden, and there's no need to add weight to her shoulders.

They move in an awkward stumble to the mouth of the wagon. Cullen twitches aside the cloth, then props Heloise against the frame.

Federico looks up from the campfire. He's got a flask of something to his mouth. He takes a swallow, shakes his head, and when he looks up at them, his lips curve up.

"Herald," he says, and Cullen feels Heloise stiffen at the word. She truly has come to hate it, then. "It is so good to see you up and walking." He actually turns his smile upside-down in a ridiculous parody of sadness. "I was so _worried_ for you. I hope you are not too terribly injured, after your exertions?"

Heloise says nothing, only leans against the wagon frame and stares at him. Cullen can feel her power itching along his tongue. It even makes the roof of his mouth tingle, and then travels backward into an itch that tempts him to drive the Crows' very small knife deep into his ear in hopes of scratching it away.

"And Commander. Surely you are exhausted from your… efforts, shall we call them, on her behalf? Come, have a seat by the fire. I would hear all about the Herald's travail."

Cullen feels his brows knit as he tries to puzzle out that phrasing. It's smarmy, but he's come to expect that from the Crow leader. He has no idea what the man could be referring to, and yet it seems obvious that there's a reference buried there. Some hidden dagger the Crow hopes he'll prick himself upon, and yet he doesn't seem to be grasping it.

Whatever it is, it seems a bridge too far for Heloise. Or perhaps she has finally gathered the concentration and power, because with a flare that sets his mouth ablaze, a blast he has to fight himself not to smite reflexively, she extends a hand, and his eardrums nigh burst with the sound of shattering glass. Lines of light trace themselves over Federico's body, starting at his chest, but they wriggle and writhe around him like a nest of serpents, thrown from her hand. The air turns scorched, and even Cullen's teeth buzz with how near he is to lightning.

One of the Crows looks up from cleaning his armor, notes the spasmodic flailing of his superior officer, and promptly returns to his task. None of the others even pause in their work. It's a surreal scene: Heloise, leaning against the wagon with a hand outstretched. Half a dozen Crows hauling water or cleaning armor or cutting slices of bread, and in the middle of it all, a man dies by inches.

Federico twitches and jerks, sliding from the log. One of his legs goes into the fire, but it would seem his lungs or his throat are too locked-up even to permit his screams of agony. The trouser leg catches flame, but Heloise doesn't end the lightning. She simply keeps her hand extended and watches as Federico dies.

When it's over, there's the quiet of an early spring night in Orlais, ringed round with crickets and sleepy birdsong and men bustling about. The stench of charred flesh — like an over-roasted ham — and a lightning-split sky linger in the air. When Cullen takes another breath through his nose, he smells the last notes of the lavender in Heloise's hair.

There is no chance that lavender will ever mean aught but anguish to him.

The Crow who had been cleaning his armor looks up again, then draws a dagger. He calmly wends his way to the half-charred husk that was once his leader, and with one swift motion, lifts him by the head and cuts his throat. The blood dribbles slowly out of the deep marks, and now that he's closer to the fire, Cullen recognizes his face.

It's the one who had sided with him that morning, about the water.

Both Cullen and Heloise stare at the man's handiwork. Heloise does not move, and her expression turns from colorless to grave, stony. Cullen opens his mouth, closes it, and then simply makes a short, cutting 'why' gesture. It seems the safest bet for being understood.

"It is never bad to be sure, Signore Commander," the Crow says, by way of explanation. "I am Fernan. Herald, how may we serve your will?"

But Heloise has no orders for them. He can see it, in the dead, blank expression on her face, in the way she sags. He lifts one of her arms, drags her nearer to him so he can support her.

* * *

One of the Crows — not Fernan — helps Heloise further into the woods for some privacy. Cullen wants to go with them, finds himself unaccountably anxious at the thought of Heloise — his Inquisitor and his friend, and he had begun to entertain hope of more, until their capture — left alone in the supervision of an assassin. But when he opens his mouth to object, when he starts forward, Heloise simply turns her gaze to him and shakes her head.

Pushing him away again, as surely as when she had twisted away from his hand on her fevered brow.

When she and the Crow return from the woods, Cullen can't help but note that the Crow is pale. His expression is tight, drawn, and when he looks to Cullen, he swallows so hard the ball of his throat bobs. What could possibly have distressed a trained assassin to that extent, he can't begin to guess, but he suspects it has something to do with the health of the Herald of Andraste.

They need to get a move on. Find a chirurgeon, or a midwife. Maybe even one of those butchers who call themselves field surgeons, although he hates the thought of a leg-taker anywhere near Heloise.

Cullen helps her back into the wagon. He helps her settle into the furs, and winds a new — well, previously untouched — woolen blanket about her bare legs. The old one, he notes, has thick, dark stains, so he tosses it out of the wagon to be burned.

She eats at last when he brings her the meal he stored away for her. Strangely, the new lead Crow, Fernan, invites Cullen to join the Crows for their evening meal with a jerk of his head. Cullen looks to Heloise, then dips his chin in her direction.

One of the Crows brings him a bowl of stew.

"Give the Inquisitor some peace, Signore Commander. Let her rest," Fernan says. Yet again, he finds his protest forestalled. This time, the Crow holds up a hand and adds, "She has need of solitude. Can she truly feel safe with any of us, just now?"

A fair point. And though Cullen grits his teeth, he can't deny the truth of it. So he eats with the Crows. All through the meal, he watches them for any sign of injury, of the loose-limbed satisfaction that comes of satiating desire. He looks for guilt, as well. He sees none of it, not even the sick sort of smugness he might expect from the less professional.

Which of you was it, he wants to demand. The question burns on his tongue, pounding a rhythm at the forefront of his thoughts. Which of you. Which.

But they're just a pack of murderers for hire. Nothing unusual about them. He almost wants to tear his hair out, or just put the knife in his boot to the throat of the nearest Crow and demand answers. It doesn't make _sense_. It doesn't add up.

Unless their leader really was the man to assault the Inquisitor. And his subordinates… what, watched? Is that what Cullen did, too? Did he voice no objection, or had he simply been too intoxicated to protect — 

He'll drive himself mad if he keeps thinking about this.

"I'll need to see a map," he says as he dumps his stew bowl into the wooden wash basin the Crows are evidently traveling with. The basin is yet dry, but he has no doubt one of the Crows will carry it to the stream for at least a rinse.

This amuses one of the Crows. The shorter man arches an eyebrow and says, "Oh? You will, will you?" in a tone that, were Cullen younger and in less control of his temper, would have earned him a fist to the throat.

"I want to plot a course to the nearest town. The Inquisitor is injured and in need of better care than anyone here can provide." If even one of these Crows says something about being a field medic, he might well start laying about with his fists.

A few of the Crows look askance at each other. But they do, after a few swift bursts of Antivan, produce a map and a lantern. After taking a moment to orient himself and divine their position according to the map, Cullen begins tracing his finger along toward towns and villages.

They're not truly far from the Frostbacks, but considering circumstances, it may well take doubly long. Especially trying to get the wagon up the mountain passes.

"Trefail," Cullen says. "We head for Trefail at first light."

He raps on the frame of the wagon and boosts himself up, partly into it. Heloise has turned away, and he can see from the even rise and fall of her breath, from the relaxed line she makes, that she has fallen asleep. He watches for a moment, strangely satisfied to see her peaceful. In his chest, his heart twists, and he resolves to ignore its pull, as he's been ignoring it for most of a year now.

No use waking her to tell her he'll be just outside. Cullen leaves the wagon, and almost doesn't look back.

* * *

The dawn breaks gray, and then pink, and Cullen is awake to greet it. He watches, idly, trying to gain some sense of where he is, as a fitful breeze pushes fog about. He's just beginning to stir from the warm, comfortable haze enough to try and touch a white wisp in the air when all the pieces of the last few days reassemble themselves in his mind. It's like the final click as a wooden chess piece finds its way to its correct starting spot on the board, and he scrambles to his feet in a trice.

His first business of the morn is to check on Heloise. He doesn't wait or knock before he hauls himself into the wagon. His boots land on the floorboards with a soft noise, but she doesn't rouse. It strikes him as odd; he seems to recall her waking almost as easily as he during this long, mad, awful journey. 

Worse, the scent of blood is thick in the cold air within the wagon. He feels his heart pick up its pace, and he's at her side almost without thinking, without even noticing the steps he takes.

He gathers her in his arms on some mad reflex. He just barely stops himself shaking her by the shoulder. He doesn't quell the urge to feel her forehead, though, and is relieved to find that whatever fever she had the day before has gone.

Her skin seems clammy, though, and both that and the blood smell worry him.

"Heloise," he hisses, and says again, and again, until she wakes.

Her waking is sluggish. He watches as she blinks once and again, both times slowly, and then stares into space for a moment. Her brow knits in confusion, and then she turns her face away.

He says her name again, and she rolls loosely, limply, in his arms, until she is looking at him.

"How are you feeling?" He asks. It's a fool's question, but he has none better.

Her reply comes in a mumble, and consists only of, "Sleepy."

Right. A fool's question. Cullen shakes her gently, and asks, "And the bleeding?"

Heloise kicks fitfully at the blankets surrounding her. Cullen looks down, and though his eyes have not adjusted fully, he can still see the dark stains. He touches his hand to one, and finds it hasn't dried yet. So the bleeding is still… He forces himself to end that thought, to divert it elsewhere.

What can be done? He can help her lie back down, leave her a canteen of clean water, and drive the Crows to Trefail double-time.

The first step here is to ease her back into the nest of blankets. He unwinds her current blanket and replaces it, yet again, with a fresh one. This one isn't as soft, but it's clean, at least. He debates balling up some of the fabric and pressing it between her thighs, but that seems both too personal and unlikely to accomplish anything.

After that, he leaves his canteen with her, and then exits the wagon.

"We move," he tells Fernan, who has evidently seen fit to rouse himself and the other men from slumber. "Now."

Fernan's eyes flick toward the wagon. He asks only, "The Inquisitor is worse?"

Cullen says, "Ready your men. I want us on the road within the hour. Less, if it can be managed."

* * *

The ride to Trefail would have taken any sane party half a day. Cullen knew that last night, and knows it when he constantly demands that the Crows make haste. They're taking a wagon on an unfamiliar wooded path to an unfamiliar town, and he is urging speeds that border on madness.

No one objects.

He sends a pair of riders far ahead with orders to find the town's doctor, the town's midwife, or both. He prays for both.

Trefail itself would be a pretty enough town, he soon learns, if he didn't hate basically this entire part of Orlais just now. The houses form a few neat rows, all with roofs of pine shingle, and most of them charmingly painted. Even from a distance, he can see neatly-laid cobblestones. Lavender plants bob their heads in a gentle breeze as far as the eye can see on either side of the road into town.

Cullen doesn't stop the wagon until right outside the town's only inn, and the remaining Crows pull their mounts up short there as well. It startles the life out of the ostler — who can't be more than four-and-ten — but Cullen has no time for him. He wraps Heloise in yet another blanket before he carries her out of the wagon, and glares the boy down when he tries to figure out what to do about more than half a dozen horses suddenly landing in his lap.

"Ser, we don't have space in the stable," the boy begins, but Cullen dodges around him and makes for the door.

"Find the room," he snaps over his shoulder, even as he carries Heloise into the taproom. She's limp in his arms, pale, and her eyelashes are dark smudges against fragile-looking cheeks. She has never seemed delicate before, but now he half fears that he will break her.

No. Only victims break. It's a thought that gave him strength in Kinloch Hold, and it gives him strength now. They've both said it: Heloise is no victim now, as he was no victim then. They are survivors, the pair of them, and though they'll bend until they creak, they'll allow nothing worse.

"We need your cleanest room," he demands of the innkeep. As she opens her mouth to reply, Cullen rides right over her, adding, "Not your largest, not your nicest. The Inquisition requires the cleanest room for the Herald of Andraste's use."

As if he'd damn well cued it, the Anchor on Hel's left hand lights up green and crackling. She shifts restlessly in his arms, her voice an exhausted mumble. But it leaves no doubt as to her identity, at least.

"T-top floor," the innkeep says. She fumbles at her bar, and then produces a key. "I'll lead the way. What happened?" She speaks the Kingstogue to him, but her accent is thick, tightly nasal and tilted. He almost doesn't understand her.

"The Inquisitor and a companion were set upon," Cullen says. It's true enough. "Some Antivans will come looking for us. Send them and whomever they bring with them up without delay. The Inquisitor's life may depend upon your speed."

"Of course, ser," the innkeep replies. She hurries to a door and unlocks it, then bustles swiftly about the room. Within moments, she's stripped the bed of its linens. Before Cullen can object to this, she unlocks a chest at the foot of the bed and replaces all the sheets and blanket with homelier fare.

"The Inquisition will see you repaid," Cullen tells her. "And anything… lost will be replaced."

The innkeep nods. Cullen pulls back the covers with one hand, nearly losing his grip on Heloise, but he manages to keep her aloft. Once he has the bed turned down, he sets Heloise down upon it, slowly unwrapping her from within her blanket cocoon. He's intent on making sure Heloise is comfortable, and then covering her up again, when he hears a soft _oh_ of understanding from across the room.

When he looks up, he sees a young woman who must be one of the barmaids with a tray of food. She sets it on the room's table, sketches what he thinks must be an Orlesian curtsey, and then dashes out of the room. He hears a rapidfire conversation in Orlesian, at least three female voices, and then the barmaid returns carrying a wooden tub, while a younger girl carries an armload of towels. They deposit their burdens, then gaze curiously at Heloise.

Because of course they would, they both begin speaking to him in Orlesian, with quick, dark glances and wide eyes. The younger girl flutters her hands in distress, trying to communicate… something.

Cullen shakes his head. "Not so quickly," he tells them. He's passable in the language, if a little old-fashioned thanks to learning it in the abbey, but these two are beyond him just now, speaking over each other.

Before the girls can ask their questions again, the innkeeper's voice calls out two names, and both girls startle. They give him swift, perfunctory curtsies and dart lightly from the room. 

Cullen rests his hand on Heoise's forehead,and is only a little pleased to note that her fever has not returned.

* * *

The Crows find the inn within a quarter of an hour. They and the doctor and the midwife must brush right past the innkeeper and the taproom's patrons to storm up the stairs. Cullen catches a glimpse only of two women in their later middle years, hair gone steel gray and faces entirely bare, devoid even of masks. One of them wears a white over-tunic, while the other simply has a white smock over her dress.

A bag of medical instruments thumps onto the bedside table, and the younger woman points an imperious finger at the door.

"Out," she says.

Cullen hesitates, watching Heloise's chest rise and fall, watching her eyelids flutter open and closed. Blood spreads on her skin beneath the blankets, thick and dark and glistening, though he cannot see it. The younger woman stares at him, while the older one moves to Heloise's side and feels her forehead.

He can do nothing further here. He goes.

* * *

When he goes to speak to the innkeeper about renting rooms until the Inquisitor can be safely moved again, he finds her in the kitchen hacking at a block of ice. When she's sheared away enough to satisfy her, she sweeps it all into a bucket and hands it to one of the maids.

"Upstairs," the innkeeper says, and her voice sounds more natural, though raspier, in her native Orlesian. "Top floor. You know the room, Arlette."

"Yes, Matron," the maid replies, and takes off with the bucket.

"They've called for ice?" Cullen asks. "Already?" He turns to watch the girl go, then turns back to the innkeeper.

The innkeeper switches back to the Kingstogue. "No. But I know they'll be needing it. And you will be needing rooms, yes? For at least three days."

"For at least that, yes."

"The Inquisition is welcome to the top floor," says the innkeeper. Her eyes narrow in thought as she looks at him, but whatever she's thinking — about how much that will cost her — she doesn't voice it. She has at least that much grace.

Cullen says, "The Inquisition will reward you for your generosity, you have my word."

"We shall see," the innkeeper replies. But she hands over keys to the rooms on the top floor, and when the midwife or the physician or both call for hot water, one of the maids brings him a steaming bucket.

It's not enough to fill a bath — if he had a tub to bathe in, which he does not, and Cullen really doesn't want to know why none of the rooms have bathtubs — but it's the first hot water he's been able to clean himself with in over a week. He's happy enough to shuck his shirt and grab a bar of soap.

He's soaping up his back when the stinging starts. It begins in one edge of his back, lancing pinpricks of fire as split skin objects to the soap, and then slowly, line by fiery line, stretches to the other. The burn is so intense, so overwhelming, that for a moment he wonders if he'd been flogged while he was out.

He dumps the last of the hot water over his head and then races to the beaten bronze mirror in the corner. He half turns, looking over his shoulder, and stares at what he sees.

Ten red lines in his white skin, starting with half-moon cuts and turning deeper, jagged. A few of the lines stay shallow, but all were deep enough to draw blood, and some few seem to have taken chunks out of his back.

Cullen presses his thumbnail to one, and sees that the shape, though not the size, is a perfect match.


	2. Chapter 2

Even here in Trefail, in the low Orlesian foothills west of the Frostbacks, the early spring night is chilly enough that Cullen would be thankful for the fire crackling in his hearth, if he were thankful for much just now. If he's not going to sleep — and he suspects he won't tonight — then why not shiver as he lies awake?

He's having to sleep on his stomach, anymind, a position he's not much used to. The cuts are newly irritated and still wide open, only a day or so old, and he doesn't think the innkeeper changed the sheets in here. Even if she did, they're scratchy. No use aggravating his skin further.

Worse yet, the innkeeper put a sachet of lavender beneath the pillow. He'd found and pitched the stupid thing as soon as he'd identified the smell, but the scent lingers. It seems to rise from the fabric beneath his face, gently wafting into his nose every time he manages to still his furious, whirling thoughts. The scent disorders his thinking all over again, leaves him angry and half mad from hazy memories that don't fit with the facts as he knows them.

He corrects himself: the facts as he thought he knew them.

This, then, he can be certain of. First, the marks on his back were made by someone facing him. They would have been beneath him but clinging on, or perhaps sitting in his lap, though they start a little low for that.

Second, there were no women of any race among the Crows. There were a few elves, but the marks are all set too close together to have come from a man, even an elf.

Third, Heloise was non-specific as to just who had assaulted her. She never once named her attacker.

Fourth, Cullen has no concrete memory of anything after about noon two days past. All he has, truly, is the smell of lavender, and a lump in the pit of his stomach where dread sits.

He sighs, then rolls so that he can cast the blankets off and rise from the bed. He shoves his feet into his boots, not bothering with the laces — as Heloise hadn't bothered with hers, the night of their capture, of their first punishment — and strides from the room. 

Cullen doesn't have to walk far. Indeed, his room is close to hers, nearer the staircase, but the last line of defense against any outside threat. Of course, should the Crows prove a threat again, he's her vanguard, but he finds himself rather doubting that it will happen. They all seem remorseful, and none of then had seemed particularly willing or interested in their endeavor when Federico had been in charge.

The door to Heloise's room is yet closed. Anxiety claws from his lungs toward his heart, but he forces it back down. That the physicians have not emerged is not a bad sign, and after the second hour, there had been no soft sounds of pain. There is still a soft yellow-orange glow just barely visible from the gap between door and lintel.

They are at work upon her, still, then? He tilts his head and listens, but the door is heavy, and he catches nothing.

The door does not swing wide and admit him. Cullen stares at it, even goes so far as to place his hand upon the doorknob, and then turns away.

* * *

The taproom has whiskey. It's swill from Jader that doesn't taste like it's been properly aged, but it's strong swill that burns in his throat. He has enough respect for himself to drink from a glass, though not enough respect for the whiskey to pair it with water the way he learned to do as a templar officer.

He bought it off the innkeeper for a single silver piece, and has been nursing it ever since. The whole bottle's worth maybe half what he paid, but as the innkeeper left him his glass and the taproom when she cut everyone else off for the night and headed off to her bed, he suspects he was buying somewhat more than liquor.

So he sits, and he drinks, and he watches the fire burn low. And the Inquisitor's peculiar silence, the outline in his head that matches ill to his memories, it all circles around and around in his thoughts.

What makes him sicker: that he's wrong, and there is some other explanation, or that he's _right_? He can't say. Both ideas make his stomach roil.

Eventually, one of the Crows comes down the stair. It's Fernan, because of course it is, and the Crow makes a straight line for him. Cullen pours himself another finger, watches it shine amber in the light for a moment before he takes another sip.

"You should sleep, Signore Commander," Fernan tells him.

"Can't," Cullen replies.

It's just one word, but he nods after he manages it. It's a perfect summation of his night: can't settle, can't watch over the Inqusitor, can't sleep, can't silence his thoughts. Pity, that even after so much drink, he's still at the mercy of his own mind.

Fernan, it would seem, doesn't pick up on the niceties of his answer. Instead, the Crow claps a hand on Cullen's shoulder — though he seems entirely unsurprised when Cullen shakes him away, nearly tipping himself from his chair in the process — and says, "Should anything go amiss with the Inquisitor, the physicians will awake you. They have promised me this."

"'s more than that."

Fernan's eyes on him are canny. They glint in the firelight, but then he heaps sand on the fire in the hearth, causing it to sputter and die. "It must be, to send you running here. You seem a man who would despise drunkenness, most of all in himself."

"You, of all people, don't get to judge." As retorts go, it's a weak jab, and Cullen winces a little at the way his voice is already slurring. He does hate to be drunk, and he especially hates it when he's obviously drunk.

"No, I suppose I don't." The Crow tugs on his arm. "Come upstairs, Signore Commander. Go to bed. The Herald would never forgive me if I let you make yourself too ill."

"What happened two nights ago?" Cullen asks the question bluntly, but he does rise from his seat. He lists to one side a moment, has to steady himself by flattening his hand on the table. He gropes along the finely polished wood until his hand closes around the bottle, still uncorked.

But Fernan shakes his head. "That is for the Herald to say, I think."

Cullen lets that answer stand until they've made it all the way up the stairs. He still has the whiskey in one hand, and he's managed not to spill anything. When Fernan pushes his door open, Cullen leans heavily against the frame. The world tilts and spins around him, so intensely he might well be sick from it, and he's light-headed enough that he thinks he could bear the answer.

He turns to look at Fernan, and asks, "Was it me? Am I the man who — who injured her?" He knows he's looking hard — if slightly unfocused — at the other man, that his voice has all the intensity of madness. And yet he must know. The question is a coal in his gut, burning holes through him.

"Get some rest, Commander," Fernan replies. "We'll all be a stronger in the morning, and you may even hear your answers from the source."

The door closes, and Cullen snarls a few curses at the damnable, sneaky, meddling Crow who won't tell him anything. But there's no reply from the other side of the door, so he makes his way toward his bed. He sets the whiskey down on the table, thinks better of it, and takes a last swig, straight from the bottle's open mouth. He waits a moment and then takes a second, and then finally sets it back down again.

The whiskey doesn't bring any memories back. He searches again, breathes in the scent of lavender that won't bloody leave the room. It mingles with the smoke, and for a moment, he thinks he might have something more concrete, the smell of the flower in his mouth and soft, silken hair beneath his fingers. But it slips from his grasp.

Rather than chase the memory, Cullen upends the bottle for a third sip. This one almost doesn't burn his mouth and throat.

He doesn't even take his boots off before he collapses face-first onto his bed.

* * *

Cullen wakes in possibly the vilest humor he's had since he first quit lyrium. His head buzzes pain all the way down to his toes. It hurts to have eyes. It hurts to have hair. Sunlight is clearly a torture invented by the Maker to punish wrongdoers. He takes a few slow, agonizing moments to realize that the rhythmic wooden thumping is, in fact, someone pounding on his door and causing a ringing in his ears, rather than the other way round.

The world reels crazily around him as he forces himself upright. Instinct prompts him to buckle his sword to his belt before he does anything else. That done, he makes his way to the door and fumbles for the key latch, only to realize the key is still on the table and he hadn't locked the damned door last night. So he pulls at the knob, swinging the heavy wood his way, and has to squint a moment at the figure before him.

The woman standing on the other side of his door, with her fist raised to knock and a startled expression on her face, is an Inquisition scout. Cullen can only barely see her face beneath the hood, so she's either Leliana's or one of Harding's.

"Skyhold already knows we were — set upon, I take it?" Cullen demands. He cringes at how loud his voice is in his ears.

"Yes, Commander," the scout says, dutiful. Her voice, too, is too loud, and she doesn't seem to notice his wince. Anticipating his question, she says, "A farmer saw your horses wandering loose and took them to the first Inquisition outpost he could find. We've been scouring the towns for any sign of you." 

So those fancy carved saddles and expensive, over-decorated reins and bridles were actually good for something. Inwardly, Cullen tips his hat to Lady Josephine, in honor of a point scored. He'd thought the whole idea useless, though he'd consented eventually. Dennet hadn't cared one way or another, at least.

"Is Leliana on her way?" He would assume so, but the spymaster can be difficult to pry out of Skyhold. She'd been equally difficult to push out of Haven. He supposes it's fitting; she is, after all, the Inquisition's Seneschal, and for all Heloise prefers diplomacy where possible, Leliana is her right hand.

"She is, Commander," the scout says, even as Cullen exits his room and shuts the door. "Er, aren't you going to lock that?"

"Why bother? There's nothing in there of value." He shrugs, and begins to head to the next door down. "Any word on the Inquisitor's condition?"

The frantic questions from the night before all strike him again. They hit as one, and he fights to keep them from his countenance.

The scout shakes her head. Her gaze drifts to his right, to the door at the end of the hall. She's too focused there, he thinks, to see the doubt and the dread he knows must be writ clear on his face.

"No word to me, but the physician wishes to speak to you."

"They're within?" He motions with one hand to the door of Heloise's sickroom. At the scout's nod, he says, "Thank you. Dismissed, scout…?"

"Cooper," the scout replies. Definitely one of Leliana's, then. He shouldn't be surprised, he supposes, and the way Cooper watches him for a few moments before she leaves is just another hint at her training.

* * *

Within the sick room, he sees that they've hung thin white sheets around the bed. It obscures the sickbed, turns Heloise into a dark smear behind pale linen, but they've thrown the window shutters, so the morning light leaves the shadow of her bed and two chairs. At some point in the night, the women or the inn's maids must moved them into the room, beside the bed. By the window, he sees one of the rarer, rune-lined washtubs. It's probably the only such tub in the whole village.

One of the women looks up from her place as a shadow beside Heloise's bed, and rises. She intercepts him quickly, and with short, sharp motions, draws him away, into the hall.

He almost doesn't know what to ask first. He's not sure of this woman's role, much less of her skill at it, but just how Heloise is doing is far more important.

"How is she?" He asks the question as softly as he can. The doors are thick, yes, but there's no use waking Heloise, if she isn't already awake.

"Introductions first, Commander." The woman pauses, then tilts her head. "You _are_ the Commander of the Inquisition's Forces?" At his nod, she nods back. "I am Marjolaine, the town's physician. My companion is Bérengère, the midwife. We have both attended the Inquisitor…"

"Yes," he snaps. "And how does she fare?"

"We have stopped the bleeding, and she has no fever." Marjolaine holds a hand up and looks him in the eye. When she continues, her voice is firm: "She _will_ heal, Commander."

He knows — the way he knew when he awoke, that morning after, that he would learn something awful — that she is trying to prepare him for bad news. And yet he cannot help but ask, "She will make a full recovery, then?"

Marjolaine winces. "It may be that she will not bear children. That cannot be called a full recovery. But she will live." The words drop bluntly, though quietly, from her mouth, and they ring in the hall around him.

The force of the thought — that he has wounded her that gravely — forces the air from his lungs. His head twinges and his eyes sting, and for a moment, the word spins. He feels himself sway slightly on his feet, but he locks his knees. The Inquisition's Commander of Forces cannot be seen sagging against a wall in an Orlesian inn after receiving bad news, no matter how much he wishes to.

He should be relieved, but he had never really doubted that she would live. If the explosion at the Conclave did not kill her, if the Anchor did not kill her, if taking an avalanche to her spine and then walking for hours through a Fereldan blizzard did not kill her, then surely this could not have either.

So instead, he's simply sickened at what was done to her. At what _he_ may well have done to her.

As if she doesn't see his discomfort, Marjolaine continues her litany. "Bérengère and I had to stitch her flesh together, within, and while we found no damage to the gate of her womb, such matters are always difficult to predict."

"Damage thence would have killed her by now," an older woman's voice, cracked and with just the faintest hint of an aged quaver, adds from further down the hall.

It is with this that Bérengère enters the conversation. She carries a bucket of water in one knobby, gnarled hand. Her eyes are a darker gray than her hair, and Cullen can't help but note that the bridge of her nose sits crooked and the end looks squashed. Someone's taken a swing at her. Possibly more than one.

"She must rest," says Bérengère, casting out her calm voice like a rescue line in a storm-tossed harbor, "but give her a month or less, and it will be as if she were never harmed."

His attack of her scythed away, smoothed away. Made as intangible and yet ever-present as the scent of lavender. He isn't sure if he should take heart or be ill.

He had bethought himself beginning to care deeply for her, and now… If he is the cause of her suffering, if he was somehow persuaded to assault her, then how could she bear to look at him? How can he claim to love her now, if he was so willing to maul her?

He forces himself to focus on the matters pertaining to the Inquisition. "How long until she can safely be moved?" They'll have to hire a carriage, to be sure. He has no idea when she will be able to ride, but he can't imagine it will be comfortable for some time yet, and he's not going to put her back in a wagon cart.

It is Marjolaine who says, after a shared look with Bérengère, "Bed rest for three days. A precaution only, but still prudent. She must not ride, however, for a full week. Perhaps more."

She won't like that. If Cullen knows her half so well as he thinks he does, then the very minute she's free of bed rest, she'll be clamoring either to continue the mission for Leliana or to return to Skyhold and advance their fight against Corypheus. Still, he'll see it done. Better she be unhappy with him than come to harm.

"May I speak with her?" If she'll even consent to see him. If she can possibly bear to lay eyes on him. He adds, "If she's awake, I mean."

"She is awake, Commander. I will ask her if she feels well enough to receive visitors," Marjolaine allows. She flings a look at the door, then bobs in an outline of a bow and retreats within. 

The country manners on this side of the Frostbacks, he notes, don't differ that much from those he grew up with in Honnleath. Is that from the Occupation, or are the smallfolk of Ferelden and Orlais truly not so different?

Marjolaine opens the door again and nods. Her expression is grave, but she passes by him without a second glance to allow him entry. It's Bérengère who turns to watch him go, eyes narrowed in thought.

* * *

Heloise turns her head to look at him as he pulls one of the sheets aside. The dark circles beneath her eyes have lightened, and the marks of a man's mouth on her throat have faded to green-tinged purple. It's better, he supposes, than the purplish black they'd been the day after.

The healers have propped her up with pillows, allowing her to recline rather than forcing her to lie flat, and they've covered the thin white linens with a thick quilt. To cover any new blood stains, or to keep her warm? They've placed a jug of water on the table next to her, and Cullen notes that stalks of elfroot stick out of the metal carafe. She cradles a mug loosely in her hands, and when he looks, he sees that it is empty.

"Inquisitor," he says. Her eyes narrow as she winces so hard she even draws her pale lips thin and tight. Cullen corrects himself, gently, with, "Heloise. How are you feeling?"

"Tired still." She doesn't sound quite so dry or hoarse, as though a night of rest and mugs of healing water have helped her throat heal. But when she opens her mouth to speak, he can see that her gums look pale. "And thirsty all the time."

Cullen nods to her mug. "Shall I pour you another?"

"Please." A pause, and Heloise says, "And if you can find it in your heart to bring me wine or cider, I'd appreciate it. Marjolaine has decided I need to eat liver."

"I rather fear what Bérengère would do to me if I dared," Cullen replies. He takes her mug, though, and fills it with the water. 

Heloise takes it back from him with both of her hands and drinks in long sips that make her throat bob. When she's drained it, she collapses back against the pillows with a sigh. "Thank you," she says, and she sounds so absurdly grateful that something twinges in his chest. There is no way he deserves such thanks.

"You've been far better to me than I deserve," she adds, and her gaze turns distant. She aims her eyes at the opposite end of the room, as if trying to divine something beyond the sheets that screen her bed, but Cullen has the sense that she's looking inward and backward. Turning back the days that have passed, sweeping away the lavender-scented haze that separates this morning from that night.

"Don't say that," he says, and though he tries to keep his voice gentle, he cannot help leaning in as he tries to force his point into his words, putting all the same intensity into it that he used with Fernan last night. He must sound like a madman — he sees her startle — and though he longs to busy his hands with mug and carafe again, he does not back down.

"You're all treating me as some helpless victim, in no control of my circumstances. I _had_ a choice, Cullen, and I made the wrong one."

"No. You are no victim. Victims break," he tells her, because this, at least, is nothing more than true, "and you survived. Whatever choice you feel you made, you suffered for, are _still_ suffering for —"

"A suffering I richly deserve." Her green eyes are intent upon him as she, too, leans into her words. They are not far parted now. Perhaps he was not the instrument of her suffering — should she not be cringing away from him, if he hurt her so?

Cullen searches what he knows of the past, lets his eyes trace the marks on her arms and on her throat that dip down past the loose collar of her simple tunic, even as his thoughts chase memory like dogs on the scent of a hart. But memory is elusive as a deer in the woods, and he catches only that damnable sight of black hair beneath his fingers as her head jerks away.

As softly as he ever learned to speak, as gently, Cullen makes himself ask, "Is that what he told you? The man who hurt you?"

Heloise is the one to yield. And just as she had two days before — that first day after — she withdraws entirely. Pushes him away.

"I'm tired," she tells him. She shuts her eyes, and the dark circles of her lashes look like fresh bruises on her honey-colored cheeks.

Cullen stands from the chair. He pours her another mug of water, and says, "I shall leave you to rest, then." He pauses, and then says, "Leliana is on her way here."

Heloise's entire body jerks and she looks at him with naked horror. He feels like a cad for taking that parting shot. The guilt crawls and burns in his gut, like some sort of many-toothed serpent, and he offers, almost without hesitation, "I can deal with her for you."

Her shock and dismay vanish swiftly, behind green eyes suddenly turned calm and confident and a mouth that quirks in a smirk he knows for a fact she doesn't mean. "Or try to, at least? Leliana is as much a force of nature as Cassandra."

"Or try to," he agrees.

And then he goes, his thoughts spinning crazily as he tries, once again, to fit all the pieces together.

* * *

Leliana arrives before the end of the day. She sweeps into Trefail and its inn in what almost seems like a cloud of smoke, a burst of feathers, and the soft whisper of leather over chainmail.

Truth be told, her entrance is far more prosaic — and far more frightening — than that. One moment, he'd been in the taproom with the Crows, grimly discussing the possibility of their joining the Inquisition, with no one but the barmaids, the Matron, and Cooper as his allies. The next, Leliana was leaning over his shoulder, looking intently at the knife he'd been toying with to hide the unsteadiness of his hands.

The woman moves like a damned shadow.

Cullen manages, just barely, not to spring from the chair and reverse his grip on the knife. His heart pounds harder in his chest, worsening a headache made more vile with his crawling, maddening need for lyrium.

"Sister Leliana," he says. Years of musical training, of endurance conditioning, allow him to keep his breath and say her name without sounding uneven. "Thank you for coming so quickly."

Her full lips have quirked just slightly down beneath her hood, and her blue eyes are cloudy, troubled. Some part of him wonders — must always wonder, when faced with a spy and a great player of the Grand Game — how sincere that expression is. He chides himself for his suspicion. That she is genuinely distressed on their behalf, he does not doubt.

"Commander," she says, grave, and dips her head. "How is she? How are _you_? I've had no word of your —"

Cullen shakes his head. He knows it's too sharp a gesture, and he would apologize, but all he can bring himself to say — all the Commander of the Inquisition may say — is, "If you'd like my report, Sister Leliana, I suggest we move elsewhere."

He feels her eyes on him, the gaze as sharp and calculating as one of her birds'. She reminds him, not that he would dare tell her so, of the raptor-eyed apostate Celene sent them as some sort of aid in their quest against Corypheus, the one with the ancient elven mirror that he's found worrisome.

His room in the inn is the most private place he can think of, at least for now. He still feels vaguely uncomfortable shutting the door — this is not, unlike his office, a place of business with his sleeping arrangements out of sight. It doesn't feel appropriate, and yet it's the only option.

"I will submit nothing in writing," he says, and adds, "and I suggest you destroy any written record you have. For the sake of the Inquisition, this must remain unimportant, a footnote."

Leliana arches an eyebrow at him. She seats herself at the table left in his room, and there's an instant that her blue eyes dart toward the open bottle of whiskey, more than half gone. But then her eyes slide away from it, and it's as if it doesn't exist.

"That bad?" She asks.

"So far as the rest of the Inquisition need know, the Inquisitor was set upon by Crows on a public road, and spent some few days in Trefail, recuperating." He stops for a moment, considers, and then says the words, distasteful though they are. His voice turns sour on them as he adds, "Perhaps mention the Anchor. It's as good an explanation as any. Pay the people who know more to say nothing."

Leliana's voice is quiet but firm, dangerously so, as she says, "Cullen. Calm down. Start from the beginning."

"We were set upon in the middle of the night, just out of the Frostbacks," he says, and then launches into the full story. He keeps it dry, as bland and colorless as many of the reports he reads, and doesn't falter until he has to describe what passed between him and Heloise — the Inquisitor, and Maker, he's going to have find a way to keep who she is to him, and when, neater in his thoughts — after their escape attempt.

Leliana's eyes never leave him, which honestly only makes his search for the appropriate words more difficult.

At length, he settles on, "They forced her to her knees before me. An attempt to drive a wedge between us." He lets his discomfort imply the rest. 

After that, the report runs more smoothly. He skips over being required to kiss the Inquisitor the following morning; it pales in comparison to everything else, had been just another way to keep them off balance. Instead, he tries to explain just how useless he was, rendered so by the strange mixture of feeling very, very drunk while the world had seemed dreamlike and hazy and had swum before his eyes. But what happened to him seems scarcely important, in the face of other concerns.

He curses himself, that for perhaps the most important day of their captivity, he can remember almost nothing of note. Still, he offers what he can, including the observation that he had been given the drug at a different hour, by a different Crow. Usually it had been Federico to prepare it, and Federico had liked to keep him on the knife's edge between whiskey-sodden and passed out, while that day, it had been one of the others, and so far as he knows, he lost consciousness entirely.

Leliana tilts her head by a fraction. Her expression turns brittle, hard, for just a moment, and she looks to her right, past the bottle, past his bed. As if she can see through the wall and into the room next to his.

"And when you awoke?"

"The Inquisitor was injured." He lists what he saw of the injuries: her pallor, her fever, the bruises. Later, the blood. He lists, too, how listless she had been, how only a draught of lyrium had restored her to something like vigor. And that she had promptly spent it on vengeance, killing the leader of the Crows without saying a word to him.

Heloise had killed the man mid-taunt, Cullen realizes, and stops his own mouth. Had it been as he thought it, or had she specifically chosen to kill Federico before he could say something irrefutable, something that would make all the pieces Cullen struggles with now fall into place?

_—Surely you are exhausted from your… efforts, shall we call them, on her behalf?_

There had been a knife beneath those words, a trap in them. A trap made all the clearer by the half-moon cuts on Cullen's skin, red as a murderer's hand.

Leliana's expression turns cold. Her eyes are as chips of enchanted ice in her fine-crafted features, and her full mouth thins into a line. "Cullen?"

She sees it. She _must_ see it, the same thing he does.

And yet he must continue with the report. Must function, for the rest of this conversation, as if he doesn't know what he is now certain of. Must pretend for the sake of the Inquisition that he was not somehow persuaded to harm the Inquisitor, Heloise, a woman he had called his friend as well as the Herald of Andraste and his superior.

But why would he have — 

Cullen shakes himself. "I apologize; it was a momentary distraction. After the Crow leader's death, the rest of the Crows acted as allies."

"Acted? You doubt their loyalty?"

"They attacked us, not even a week past. What they allowed — I am skeptical, and not without reason." She can hardly refute that last.

Leliana inclines her head in the beginnings of a nod. "I will need to speak with the Inquisitor," she says after a long moment, "if the Inquisition's spies need to act, I need a full portrait of the events."

Cullen takes time to phrase his reply. Telling Leliana to restrain herself has roughly the same result as telling a sheep to sing. Still, he told Heloise — the Inquisitor, he told the Inquisitor he would act as a buffer. He draws in a breath, and then says, "Leliana, please try not to push her. She seems to be… delicate for now. I don't recommend…" 

His words run dry. What doesn't he recommend? Taking action? Offering Heloise — the Inquisitor — a more complete vengeance? Trying to speak to her? Trying to, Maker forbid, question her? Any and all of it, perhaps.

Leliana seems to take his meaning, regardless. "She doesn't want to speak to me."

"She panicked when I mentioned you."

Leliana sighs. It's a heavy, world-weary, disappointed sigh. He almost objects to it on principle. She's established a reputation throughout the Inquisition for being a ruthless, calculating player, only kept from being heartless by how well and thoroughly she understands the hearts and motivations of others. She should expect a woman who has just been violently assaulted by a man she trusted to dread what she thinks will be an interrogation.

"I know how to be gentle," Leliana says. She stands, then, crosses the room toward the door. Her path brings her close to him, and she turns her head to look at him. Her eyes are aglitter again, intense with some emotion, but she's too much a master of her game for Cullen to name it. "But I'll give it some time."

"Good," he says. He pauses, then adds, "If I may have a moment?"

"Of course." Leliana's smile is tight, not quite sincere. "Cassandra's sending a company this way. You'll want to prepare the town for them."

The door closes soundlessly behind her, and Cullen turns his gaze to the table. The clear glass bottle of amber whiskey. Half full. He'd gone through half a bottle in a single night, while worrying at a single problem.

His stomach clenches in a painful upward heave. It doesn't climb all the way up his throat, but he tastes bile, nonetheless. Despair and self-hatred war with rage, the outbursts of temper that accompany his body's longing for lyrium.

He'd been so impaired, so sodden and exhausted, that it would only have taken a few whispers. Perhaps a threat or two. But little more. And he would have, in his poppy-sodden haze, willingly — 

He has his fist clenched around the bottle's neck even before he's aware of crossing the room. In one fluid motion, he whirls, arm curving and fingers relaxing.

The bottle shatters against the stone chimney over the fireplace.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, and I'm sorry to say this flurry of updates will be my last for a while. I plan to take March and April off to work on my original manuscripts. Hopefully I'll manage to finish something.
> 
> For those who know of my personal situation: it's happened. The waiting, at least, is over. Now is just the reconstruction.

The sound of glass shattering seems to unknot something in him. What does it say of him, of his temper, of his self-control and grasp on his own mind, that his darker moments can only be sated by destruction?

At least it was an object, hurled against a wall. Cullen recalls, abruptly, the sight of his lyrium kit splintering against the stone wall by the door from the rotunda and Heloise whirling, startled but disbelieving, to stare at it as it passed her. An object there, too, flung in no particular direction. Simply _away_.

That was another day. This is now, and there are things to be done, now. He kicks the larger shards into a pile with his boot, then dumps them into the ash bucket by the fire.

After that, he hunts through the upstairs rooms until he finds paper and ink. Once he finds it, he heads back to his own room. The door next to his, heavy and oak, gleams in the morning light, and it takes him a long moment to tear his gaze from it.

But once his own door is closed and bolted behind him, he flings wide the window shutters to let the light in. It's syrupy and golden, here in Orlais, and the Maker-bedamned breeze carries the scent of the lavender fields from the edge of town. Better, he supposes, than the stench of a stable, but his stomach still roils.

It's the only concrete memory he has, still, and for a moment, he could swear he smells over-cooked meat and the tang of a lightning strike.

He seats himself at the table, where he'd carelessly set the whiskey last night, and puts pen to parchment. A brief, dry report, only a few lines long, for the Inquisition's records.

And, that done and sanded, Cullen takes another sheet of parchment and stares at it. Then, slowly, carefully, he begins to set down the first words of a letter of resignation.

* * *

His resignation is perfectly pleasant, casts no blame. He sands it, as well, and then tucks it into the drawer where he'd tucked the rest of his things. After that, he heads into the town to prepare for the incoming soldiery.

It's not, he thinks to himself as he scours the town for lodgings, as if he's going to resign immediately. He's not even going to resign once they return to Skyhold. He will simply have the letter ready in case Heloise — in case the Inquisitor should request — should need him to — 

Just admit it, he snarls at himself as he shoves a haybale out of his way in the barn nearest the town's inn. He has the letter ready and written in case the woman he assaulted should decide she can't bear to work with him, to look upon him.

He stops abruptly and looks up at the hayloft. With the bales out of the way on the ground level, the barn will do, he supposes. He'd prefer not to have an entire company of men in the inn, but none of the houses in town are really large enough to host extra bodies.

It's petty and he knows it, but he considers sending the Crows out here. He suspects they'd accept it as both punishment for what they helped orchestrate, what they did not protest, and as a result of his mistrust.

When Cullen goes back inside, still debating whether or not he will move the Crows, he catches sight of a ragged, thin figure going up the stairs. A ragged, knife-thin figure with an unnatural gait, wearing a too-familiar broad-brimmed hat topped by a metal cap. 

Maker forbid this disaster actually get any better. He stops still in the taproom, staring up, frozen. Why hadn't Leliana told him Cole would be here? Cooper, he knows, most likely had no idea of his presence. But Leliana could and should have warned him.

She simply chose not to. Why?

The sickness in his stomach tells him that he knows why. She didn't warn him because she wants to see what he'll do. Because she might be the Inquisition's spymaster, but she is first and foremost a woman who needs to know everything about any situation, and will use any tool to gain that knowledge.

Cullen does the same thing he's been doing for years: he throws himself into his work.

* * *

By the time he returns upstairs, he's pushing the limits of his exhausted, ill-treated constitution. He wants nothing more than to collapse into his bed — as if that will allay the throbbing behind his eyes, the way his heart races at random moments — but he can't allow it yet. There is yet more to be done.

Little though he wishes to do any of it.

He knocks on the Inquisitor's door and waits until someone answers it. Leliana swings the door open, and the moment she sees him, her face takes on an expression of compassion and concern. She takes one of his hands in both of hers, squeezing until he relaxes his fist.

"You are working too hard, Commander," she says.

Cullen tenses again, pulls his hand away. "I thought we all agreed that I would be the judge of that, and defer if Lady Cassandra objected."

"Cassandra isn't here," Leliana says, and if the compassion and concern had sounded sweet, the faint, pointed undertone of frost in her voice marks the sweetness as feigned.

It's such a strange moment — punctuated and made stranger by that gesture — that he can't put it out of his mind, even after she's left the room. When he pushes his way past the white curtains, he finds Cole sitting by Heloise's bed. 

The demon, the boy, whatever he or it is, sits as placidly on a rickety wooden chair as he might on plush cushions. He doesn't seem much interested in his own comfort, but he never has. Instead, he has his nose stuck in a thick treatise on, apparently, the mathematics of lightning. He drones the words aloud in a faintly sing-song tone. Sometimes he pauses and stares at the page.

"They're dead like this. Lifeless. Staring out forever, pinned down so anyone can pick them up. Papers on a desk."

"It is rather dry stuff," Heloise agrees. She's not looking at Cole. She's looking off into the fire and it's plain that the bulk of her thoughts have traveled inward and backward once again. "But the ideas are alive."

"They come alive in your thoughts, sparking up like candles, linked like a chandelier," Cole replies. "But they're just words for me." He wrinkles his nose for a moment, and for a moment, Cullen sees not a threat or a mystery, but a teenaged apprentice trying to get through an advanced essay when he'd rather be doing practical work. Then he ruins the image by adding, "It's masks and make-up and little puzzle boxes, trying to hide how simple it all is. If they could only listen —"

"Mages don't hear magic the way you do, Cole. I know you've talked about this with Dorian." A pause, and Heloise sounds slightly cautious as she asks, "Have you discussed it with Madame Vivienne?"

"It's not that she isn't curious," he begins.

"I wouldn't try, if I were you."

"You think I would frighten her."

Heloise reaches out. Cole doesn't dodge away, doesn't retreat or shift in the chair. Her thumb brushes along his cheek. The touch doesn't last long. She pulls her hand away soon enough, and Cole doesn't lean back into her space.

"I know you only want to help. Sometimes that's more distressing to someone than anything else, because someone trying to help them means they have a problem, and other people can see it."

Cole tilts his head for a moment, but then he tips it back and simply gives Heloise a long, steady stare. His eyes glint in the light and his lips part.

But all he says is, "Cullen is here."

"Thank you, Cole. Will you give us a little time?"

He stands from the chair and makes his way toward the screens. Cole says nothing as he passes Cullen by, though he turns his feverish, glassy eyes on him.

Cullen takes Cole's former seat. As Heloise turns toward him, he clears his throat.

"I tried," he says. At her blank expression, he adds, "With Sister Leliana. I tried to deal with her for you."

Heloise's mouth curves, but it's not her real smile. That's a much shyer look, and the one she wears now is the one she wears during judgments and when people outside her inner circle are watching her. Wry and slightly distant. Disconnected. Maker's breath, what draws him so deeply to women who use their faces like bloody Orlesian masks?

"She must have all the facts she needed from you, then. She went easy on me."

"I doubt I was able to remember enough to satisfy her." Hence her presence in the sickroom, he doesn't say. He doesn't need to say it.

A silence falls between them. Cullen reaches out and pours her a mug of water, as he did the day before. She takes the mug, and he can see the moment she starts putting things together. Her face slips into the calculating expression she'd worn before she killed Federico, and the sight of it sends a chill through him.

She holds the mug of water in both her hands, and her eyes have narrowed in thought, mouth quirking just faintly down, as she turns to face him. Her voice is too steady, too even, as she asks, "Why are you here, Cullen? What have you to ask me?"

Cullen takes in a breath.

"The one who attacked you — Heloise, was that me?"

Her eyes open wide in shock. She very nearly drops the mug of water, and he sees her tremble as she sets it down. Indeed, her entire body is shaking beneath the heavy quilt.

"Why would you think that?" Her voice is quiet, cautious. Not cool or confident or confused or any of the thousand other ways she could sound that would give him pause. She's stalling for time.

Cullen debates telling her the most damning reasons, but he decides against it. All he says is, "There is some evidence."

Her gaze flashes from her hands to lock with his, and it's at once a challenge and a sign of frustration. " _What_ evidence?" She snaps it at him, and he sees her fists clench in the blanket. "I — I damned near sold my soul to make sure there _wasn't_ any."

"How swift you were to kill their leader, and only their leader." He says it softly, gently, and then adds, softer still, "And you left… marks… on my back."

And with those words, her anger dies. Not her resolve — she would not be the Inquisitor, nor likely even named the Herald of Andraste were her resolve so easy to shatter — but he sees the tension drain away, leaving her almost limp. She relaxes her fists, letting go the blanket she'd been gripping. Her expression crumples into something he has never yet seen on her: guilt.

But what, apart from her deception, does she have to be guilty about? His thoughts reel crazily as he tries to understand. 

When she can bring herself to speak, her voice is soft, sad. Uncertain. "Cullen," she says, so quietly she's hardly even whispering his name. She pauses, then, as if she needs to gather her thoughts. It's a rarity from her; shy though her smile is, she'd been able to seem remarkably self-assured in almost any situation, from her sudden release from Haven's prison to the madness in Halamshiral.

But she hadn't been prepared for this. He's not prepared for it, either. To know that his horrible suspicions had been right. In his inebriated state, he had — 

His stomach churns. It's like his belly is full of burning-hot serpents, coiling and twining around one another. The silence between them is no help. And yet he cannot bring himself to break it. What can he possibly say?

At last, she tells him, "I'm sorry. For all of it. I… I tried to ask you what you would want."

What?

He must have asked that aloud, because she looks over at him. And he can see it, dawning on her: the realization that he has no idea what she's talking about. That he truly remembers nothing, and so cannot forgive her trespass. And with this knowledge comes the fact that if she wants him to understand, she's going to have to tell him.

He remembers the intervening weeks before he'd left Ferelden for Kirkwall. He'd felt trapped between the ragged pits and valleys of lyrium withdrawal and the constant feeling of the world closing in on him, and his temper had suffered. Once, in a fit of fury that the lyrium should have stopped, should have smothered beneath the glowing feeling of all being right with the world, he'd thrown an apprentice's vial of some potion or other against the laboratory wall.

It had all seemed to happen slowly. He'd seen the glass glint in the firelight, the apprentice's expression turning from focus to shock to fear, the shadows on the opposite wall, the room spinning as he whirled. The vial, in his hands, then the vial, flying through the air. And the lyrium had slowed the world down enough that he saw every spiderweb crack spreading over the glass, every shard as it flew once the vial struck the wall.

Watching Heloise's face just now is like that: it's as if the world has slowed enough to let him watch what peace she's regained break.

"The fault is mine, Cullen," she says. "I — Federico threatened — what happened, I initiated. I knew you were unwell, and I —"

He could swear that he feels the blood empty from his face, his throat, his hands. His whole body buzzes as his heart begins to race, pins-and-needles stabbing his arms and hands and fingers. His veins seem to freeze over.

"You…?" He wants to ask the full question, and yet he can't make his voice work.

"Federico threatened us. He — we were starting to work around the drugs. He wanted to break that." Heloise's gaze never moves from her hands, and it seems to fall most heavily on her left.

"What could he possibly have…?"

But Heloise shakes her head. "It doesn't matter. Whatever the threat, I should have been stronger. I asked you — I should have been stronger. I should have called his bluff."

The world reels. His head feels light, and yet his heart still races, pounding like a watchtower drum. There's a tinny noise in his ears, and some part of him, distant and mad, wonders if he's hearing the horns of an alarm blare.

"You," he says. "You initiated. And I — I… allowed it? Was eager enough for it to —" He can't say it. Can't even raise his hand to indicate the bruises. But he sees in the way she flinches that she takes his meaning. Something in his stomach twists in reflexive guilt.

"You weren't in control of yourself. You didn't know what you were doing. I told you before, I'm not some victim for you to pity." She, it would seem, _can_ raise her hands, and she does so to indicate herself. She touches the points of her fingers to the mouth-shaped bruise on her throat, splays them wide. "All of this, I deserved entirely."

Madness. It's madness. His breath shortens, as if his lungs within him don't want air. He stands too swiftly, knocking over the chair as he moves. His hands shake as he turns around and rights the chair.

She deceived him of his role in the assault. Deliberately. Why? And yet he cannot ask; he cannot draw the breath or find the words. He feels his hands clench into fists.

Heloise, who has always risen, seems to sink into herself in the face of his anger. She lowers her head until her chin nearly touches her chest, and her eyes flutter closed. The lashes lie dark in a feathery line against her cheeks, and once again, he sees bruises in it.

"I apologize, Inquisitor," he says, and knows that though he is but seeking refuge in the formality, the words must surely still wound her, "but I cannot speak of this any longer."

With that, he's moving from the room in strides that are too quick, his footsteps heavy on the wood floor. He wrenches the door open, though he's more careful when he closes it. He tries to exhale the tension that's coiling in him, but even the attempt seems to wind him tighter.

The top floor, he sees, is deserted. And perhaps he's selfish, but thank the Maker for that. He can't bear company or questions just now. Best to lose himself in work, and leave company and questions for later.

Cullen descends the stairs into the common room and then he's out the door, moving swiftly toward the barn. The troop have arrived, and he speaks to their sergeant, making sure all are settled and have what they need. They've already eaten — though one is still smearing crusty bread into a bowl of olive oil and lavender. He stops as he catches sight of Cullen, dropping the bread into the bowl and standing to attention. 

The scent of the lavender leaves him desperate to escape, to return to his rooms. But he forces himself to stay. He talks to the sergeant and lieutenant in command of the unit, makes certain that they have all they need. Their words are very nearly a feverish, maddening buzz. He scarce hears them — it's all just a distraction.

His stomach is in his throat again by the time he's making his way back up the stairs to his room. He's so exhausted that he almost doesn't scan the room as soon as he swings open the door.

He's glad he didn't make that mistake. Sitting at the table, with one elbow propped exactly where the bottle of whiskey had been, is Cole.

"Don't," he says. "Cole, I am not in the mood for —"

"You're both hurting. Fishhooks in fragile flesh, the one hurt bound up in the other, like you've been stitched together." A pause. Cole tilts his head. "You _were_ stitched together, for a little while, and now like lodestones, wrong sides pushing away."

"That is exactly what I'm not in the mood for, Cole. I need to sleep."

"Work and sleep," Cole says, all agreeable. He always sounds so bloody agreeable, when he's not livid about something nobody understands. "Work through the waking so the thought of it will stay silent and still. Ignore what crawls into dreams, damning, desperate to be heard."

He's being surprisingly clear today. Or perhaps between the hangover, the lyrium cravings, and his own distress, Cullen's mind has been tied in sufficient knots to make sense of the spirit.

Cullen unbuckles his swordbelt, rests his scabbard against the wall by his bed. He settles onto the straw-and-wool stuffed mattress, heavier than he intended, and sighs.

"You can't fix this, Cole," he says. Even he hears the edge in his voice.

"She lied. Bright as birds against the sun, sweet and shy as elderflower honey on the tongue. It's turning sour." Another pause, and Cole's eyes are feverish as he says, "She tries to be someone else, you know. It's not a mask. She has to look at a story inside and pull someone else's skin on to bear the weight. In the wagon, in the woods, she was trying to keep you safe."

Cullen lets him talk. There are days he almost understands Heloise's fascination with Cole: every conversation is a puzzle, a challenge. But Cullen finds it too unnerving, too complicated, to share her delight in it. Spirits and demons are too dangerous to be toyed with, and he has regular chess matches with people in the Inquisition. He has no need to go chasing mysteries.

He waits a beat, and then asks, "Would she want you to be telling me this?"

"Yes," is the immediate reply, followed by Cole turning his gaze consideringly upon the ceiling. "No," he adds. "She doesn't think anybody's noticed. She'd want you to know the second part, though."

Well, it's a start. She'd said they had been threatened; Cullen can now assume that the brunt of the danger had been aimed at him. And Cole wouldn't point it out if she hadn't thought Cullen in danger of death, or something almost as grave.

"Thank you, Cole," he says, and if there's still anger in his tone, what of it? "Leave the rest. I mean it — this needs time." Not, he doesn't add, more prodding from a spirit with a nasty habit of reading others' minds.

Cole looks at him for a long, long moment. Cullen could swear he feels the spirit crawling into his thoughts, pulling and digging, and he all but flinches backward at the feel of it. He hears his own movements against the bed's quilt, the shift and creak of the leather he wears, and he sees Cole's eyes stretch wide.

"I'm sorry," Cole says. "I was trying to help."

If Cole leaves by the door, Cullen doesn't see it. Which is just another reason to not like having Cole around. The spirit makes the back of his thoughts itch, worsens the paranoia that the lyirum cravings leave him with. Nothing to be done for it, though: Leliana saw fit to bring him, and he may even be helpful for Heloise.

With another sigh, he unlaces his boots, then peels out of his gloves and armor. He rests the rerebraces and vambraces on the table, but sits the cuirass on the chair Cole isn't using anymore.

Once he manages to crawl into bed, he falls asleep even before he registers the scent tickling his nose as lavender.

* * *

He wakes because the door opens. The scent of some flower — but more easily called to mind as a scent of anguish and illness, forever tainted with the metal undertone of blood — fills his nose, and his stomach heaves in response. He's sitting up in bed, retching and trying to reach for his sword, even as one of the inn maids sets a tray on the table, away from his armor. She sweeps to the window and throws the shutters open, then turns to face him, letting out a liquid-sounding stream of Orlesian words, nasal and tight.

Cullen catches "Leliana" and "you." He stares blankly at her for a moment as light from the window drills into his eyes, turning the usual lyrium wake-up headache into something awful.

After a moment, she sniffs and says, in heavily accented Kingstongue, "Sister Leliana wanted me to bring you breakfast."

"Thank you." He rises from the bed, belatedly jerking his chin toward the door. The maid stays where she is a moment, giving him the exact sort of judgmental look he'd expect from either Leliana or her messenger birds, but then she bobs her strange Orlesian curtsey again and quits the room.

Cullen leans over the chamberpot and heaves up nigh everything he bothered to eat in the last day or so. He's almost grateful that he's eaten so little, because it means his moments of illness are mercifully short. He rinses his mouth out with water from the mug the maid left on the table, then picks up a piece of heavy bread. There's butter and honey in dishes on the tray, both of them warmed and easily drizzled over the bread. He's only slightly more fond of Orlais than the average Fereldan — and that tolerance was beaten into him by the Order, a decidedly Orlesian institution, even in Denerim — but he has to admit, they know their niceties.

He feels almost capable of facing the day after he straps on his armor and closes the door to his room.

His first order of business, much as he'd prefer otherwise, is the company of soldiers. He turns left down the hall and makes his way to the stable, where he finds both the men of the Inquisition and the Crows engaged in drills. About half the company is in the barn, drilling.

He makes a point of spotting the sergeant and asking, "Where are the rest?"

"Poking about the town trying to find gainful work, Commander," she says. "And if it leaves them in position to identify any threats on the inn from outside, no use telling the townsfolk."

Cullen lets his mouth twitch into a smile. Devious sergeants are the Maker's gift to any army, and his seems to have been blessed beyond measure.

"How fare the Crows?"

"I don't think any of them has ever met a fair fight he didn't run from," the sergeant replies, tone just a touch dry.

Some part of Cullen bristles reflexively before he reminds himself that it hadn't been a fair fight. He'd been half-armed, half-asleep, and then the mess had devolved into a hostage situation. Or at least it had looked like a hostage situation long enough to pull his attention — 

He crushes the thought. "Are they still making noises about joining up?"

"Haven't shut up about it. I might even believe them, except for the part where they're plotting against us in Antivan half the time."

"You speak Antivan?" Her accent is pure Starkhaven, and Starkhaven is far north enough, it wouldn't be impossible. Unlikely, certainly, and a surprise, to boot. But not impossible.

"Maker, no. But when sneaky armed men start talking in a language I don't understand, I get suspicious, Commander. I apologize if I misled you."

"None needed." Cullen stares at the drills for a moment longer, folding his arms over his chest. The barn smells reassuringly of horse and hay, with a strong undernote of manure. At least it isn't those damnable flowers, he supposes. 

After a moment, he says, "Sister Leliana understands Crows. Assassins would fall under her ranks, anyway."

"Not our problem then, Commander?"

"Not our problem," he agrees. "Carry on, sergeant."

"Aye, ser."

* * *

His second order of business had been the Crows, but since he's handing them over entirely to Leliana, he makes his second order of business informing her of this fact.

Her expression when she discovers him to be the one knocking on her door is — cold. Steely. It puts him on edge. He forces himself to arch a brow and tilt his head slightly toward her door, and watches as she steps back.

"Come in," she says, and her voice is as cold as her face. The faint musicality of her Orlesian accent is a little thicker now, as if spending time in Orlais has wakened it, when Skyhold and Ferelden had allowed it slumber.

He closes the door as he enters the room. Lets silence sit a minute, watches her as intensely as she watches him, and then he says, "You know."

"More than you do, apparently." Leliana crosses to one of the pair of chairs in front of the brazier and seats herself. Her eyes glitter like a frost spell under sunlight. The tilt of her head once again reminds him of a bird — one of her ravens, perhaps, judgmental and distant. An expression more appropriate to the Inquisition's newest pet apostate.

All of this gives Cullen the impression that her knowing more about the situation than he does is the only thing keeping him alive. An absurd thought; Trefail is meant to be a footnote. She might well kill him, as a liability to the Inquisition, but she won't do so until they return to Skyhold.

Perhaps, if he wants to live, he should give his letter of resignation to Heloise before they leave — 

No. These thoughts are his craving for lyrium talking. It's the paranoia, not any real ill intent on Leliana's part. This malevolence he's sensing is no more real than the person he sometimes could swear is standing behind him, waiting to strike.

"She's told you?" Cullen draws his hands behind his back even as he straightens his spine.

"As little as she could get away with." A pause. A measuring look. "Your hands match the bruises."

That strange little gesture, her hands grasping his — now he sees. She'd been comparing his hands and the marks on the Inquisitor's skin. He doesn't know if he's offended at her suspicion, or if he should be pleased at her devious mind. Mostly, he just feels sick at the reminder.

"She claims," and he says the word as gently as he knows how, "that she invited whatever came to pass. She blames herself entirely. Has she spoken of this to you?"

Leliana's expression turns bitter, then simply rueful. She's quiet for a long moment, and then says, "No. I don't seem to make a good confidant."

Lady Josephine seems close to her, and both Cullen and Cassandra respect her. He'd considered her to be, if not a friend, then something approaching it. But Cullen dismisses the thought, gives it no voice. Leliana's assessment of herself is not the issue. 

He says, "She'll need to speak of it to someone." But that, too, poses problems. If they are to conceal this event, preserve Heloise's reputation as the indomitable, unbreakable Inquisitor, they must find someone both Inquisitor and Inquisition can trust.

"Cole, perhaps?"

He doesn't even need to speak to let her know what he thinks of that idea. Simply looks at her, long and steady. His disapproval must be writ loud across his face, because her mouth twists for a brief moment.

"We will solve this on another day, I suppose. Have you looked into hiring a coach?"

He hasn't the faintest idea where to find a coach in a town this size. But Cullen says only, "Does she intend to leave now?"

"The day after tomorrow." Leliana sighs, then looks at him full on.

Cullen voices the thought they both share: "She can't ride." He pauses, then shakes his head. "Maker's breath. I'll see what can be done." He doesn't truly hold much hope for finding a coach in this sleepy little town.

* * *

Indeed, he finds nothing of the sort. There's nothing he can hire out. They'll have to use the Crow wagon.

So he spends his time for the following day preparing it and watching the soldiers drill, avoiding Leliana and Cole. Cole, at least, seems to respect his wish for privacy, or at least find more appealing targets elsewhere. Perhaps he spends his time trying to comfort Heloise. Cullen doesn't know, doesn't dare go to check.

Leliana respects his wish to avoid her, too, in her own way. Every so often, he catches sight of her across some distance. At the edge of a room, or in a window, or the top of the stair. She always tilts her head, catching his eye, before she turns away. _I'm watching you_ , that look means. Worse, it means, _I see you_ and _I choose to let you be for now_.

This truce between them won't last once they reach Skyhold. They don't have to speak for them both to know that. In Skyhold, he'll be fair game. He half wonders what she'd say if he told her she was poaching on Cole's territory, both as a rogue and as a confidant, but he can't see himself speaking of any of this to Cole.

How much of it does the spirit even understand? Cullen has the impression that he mostly understands that two people are hurting, very badly, and doesn't see the nuances that lie between them.

None of this is relevant. The days pass. He and Leliana make their preparations in separate silence, only adjoining once: when they settle accounts with the innkeeper. She writes down the price of sheets ruined with blood, the prices of rooms and the use of the stable, of meals.

They don't haggle. Indeed, they add extra.

"The Inquisitor took a wound to the knee," the innkeep says. "Those bleed a great deal."

"And Bérengère?" Leliana asks. Her mouth twists just slightly as she asks, "Marjolaine?"

"They will keep their silence. The Inquisitor's privacy will not be profaned in Trefail."

Well, at least this bloody country can keep that much sacred. Cullen stomps on a lavender flower when they finally mount up, outside the town. He grinds it into the dust with his bootheel, and has never been gladder of his armor.

* * *

At the sight of the Crows' wagon, the Inquisitor's features turn as pale as her dusky complexion allows. He watches as her green eyes widen for a moment before she resumes her even expression. There's a tenseness around her mouth, though, a strain in her jaw, that tells him she loathes the idea of returning to that wagon.

Though he may have less reason than she, since he yet remembers nothing of that night, he can't stand the thought either. He'd been glad to learn that the soldiers had brought his mare along, and two days of rest have been enough to restore Sweetcream to riding fitness.

He steps forward, extending a hand. He tries to keep his face neutral without looking grim or stern, but he has no idea if he manages it.

Her palm is so cool that it radiates through the leather of his gloves, chilling his skin. It would worry him, but given the element she reaches for, he suspects it a sign of good health. In the worst case, it may perhaps mean her body is burning through her mana to heal her, and it's showing itself as icy skin.

Cullen hands Heloise up into the wagon, her palm clasped in his. He places his other hand at her waist, as swiftly and gently as he can, to help her keep her balance as she takes the step one of the soldiers had dragged to the wagon's mouth.

He pulls his hand away as soon as her other hand is on the frame, allows her to separate her palm from his as she makes her way within the wagon. He hates that he has been the one to help her into it — given all that lies between them, it seems ill done.

Once she's safely within, he turns away and heads for Sweetcream. He mounts up, refusing to think of all the tangled distance and darkness that haunts this ill-fated mission.

* * *

They ride for hours, pounding the distance to dust. Cullen speaks to no one, and no one has much to say to him, either. They don't stop until much too soon to sundown, in his opinion. But they are all professionals, and they'll use what time they have well.

The night falls fast, darkness cloaking the world around them as the sun sinks beneath the mountains. The soldiers move around a few paces away, and in the distance, he hears the horses snorting softly as they're rubbed down.

It feels strange, to do nothing. It's not a large camp, but there's always work to be done when one creates a billet. Yet the sergeant has matters well in hand, and this —

Little though he wants it, this must be done.

Rather than hand Heloise down, Cullen climbs into the wagon.

"Inquisitor," he says. She flinches at the formality of it, as she always does, but he forges on. "I know the formality pains you, but I know no other way to speak of this."

Heloise's green eyes are wary in the low light. She curls in on herself, slightly defensive, and Cullen wants to punch himself in the mouth.

He rushes to say the rest of what he must: "I have prepared a resignation. If you wish it, I'll tender it at Skyhold."

Her eyes stretch wide, and for a moment, she doesn't look like the Her Worship, the Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste. She's just a woman, human and fallible, in an impossible situation, who's been fighting a very real war against a creature of legend. And he's not making this any easier on her.

Her voice is cracked and dry, but very, very carefully neutral, when she asks, "Do you wish to resign?"

She's trying not to show him how very badly she wants his resignation. He can see it. 

"Are you sure you want me to answer that?" He asks, softly.

She flinches again, eyes shuttering closed, and he wonders how he could have ever thought her face a mask.

But then she opens her eyes and asks, almost as neutral but with the faintest hint of sharpness, "Do you _want_ to resign?"

Cullen holds his peace for a moment that seems to stretch, and claws at him as it goes. The only true answer he can give her — and even now, angry and reeling as he is, he cannot lie — is one she desperately does not want to hear.

And yet, if she wished him to resign, why ask twice? He once again has the sense of something not _sitting_ right.

He says, "I know this will not please you to hear… but no. I will resign if you cannot bear my presence in the Inquisition, but I have no wish to do so."

"You're wrong," Heloise replies, voice soft. "Maker forgive me, but that's exactly what I wanted to hear."


End file.
